Reflective Journal for Week 5

   I don’t think I am good at multitasking, so I was working much harder to finish all the assignments within two days. Why? Because I have a three-hour long presentation to do next Tuesday, and I also don’t think I’ve prepared well enough for it. And, there’s a whole-day workshop about speaking fluent English tomorrow. On top of that, I’ll have to go to Taipei and celebrate Mother’s Day this weekend. Finally, I can be fully concentrated on my presentation after this reflective journal.

   Enough complaining now. Then, what have I learned this week? Well, first of all, I read the suggest articles about PBL, WebQuest, Alternative Assessment and rubrics, and I found not only do they have a much in common, but this online course itself is exactly based on PBL. All of the topics this week are talking about one thing, which is to have learners demonstrate what they can actually DO with the language, instead of showing their mere knowledge on traditional paper-pencil tests. In order to do that, teachers have to develop rubrics in advance, and students are supposed to know the criteria even before they work on the project.

   As for practical web skills, I have learned how to develop rubrics through RubricStar at http://rubistar.4teachers.org/ . Rubrics play a curial role in evaluating students’ speaking and writing performances when a teacher decides to implement PBL in his or her classroom. With the help of the website, teachers can easily develop rubrics that suit their needs. The other skill I learned is to create a WebQuest through Zunal WebQuest Maker at http://www.zunal.com/ , which you can sign up and follow the instructions to create your own WebQuest step by step. To add some failover to your page, you are also allowed to upload pictures, music and videos to make it more appealing.

  I finally spent quite some time organizing and stacking my links on Delicious.com, and I’m going to introduce my page to other teachers at a workshop next Tue. After that, I can finally concrete on this online course without worrying about failing to hand in my homework on time. After the final project, it’ll be drawing even closer to the end of this semester. Being subsidized by the MOE, I can’t wait to go to Australia to study for five weeks this summer. Anyway, all I want to say is learning makes me happy, and being able to study abroad in a English-speaking country and see whether my English is good enough to survive there makes me even happier.